Brain Farts Part 2

I thought I would not have time, but I guess I am inspired. The second brain fart scenario was during the cold, windy and miserably wet game that was played this weekend where I was the center and should have suspended it due to the deplorable weather conditions.

During the game, a sub for the red team was waiting at midfield. The ball is rolling down the line near him and is clearly going to go out of bounds shortly. The kid, I guess, decided that he could save some time by not letting the ball roll down the hill behind him but he did not wait until the ball left the field of play. He basically stopped it while the ball was still "in". My AR who was right there, waggles his flag and I blow the whistle.

The kid realizes his mistake and since it was right there by both coaches, I try to find an amicable solution since this was just a young kid and a true brain fart. There was no intention to delay, to cheat, to do anything other than not let the ball roll down the hill. It would have been red's throw in but I suggested to both coaches if we had an uncontested drop ball for white since red touched the ball. The red coach said no, he did not think that was fair.

Since I had had just about enough from that coach by that time, I said "Fine". I called the kid over, issued a yellow card and said we were going to restart with an indirect free kick for white. Coach realized he probably should have accepted my initial offer. I did not feel like I had to explain to him that his not accepting my first offer was going to generate harsher consequences. He thought I should just give his team the throw in. Oh well. Hopefully the next referee that deals with him will have an easier time with him since he didn't get what he wanted just by protesting.

One of my pet peeves in soccer is when a coach demands that I do something that I would do anyway. Most commonly it is that a player has committed 3-4 fouls and they want a yellow card. Well, if they yell and scream to give the person a yellow, I have a hard time with that because of the fact that it "looks" like I am taking orders or just going along with what the coach says and that is rarely good for business. In this case, it was the coach not wanting to go along with an uncommon situation and forcing my hand to actually apply the rules even though I think no one thought the punishment fit the crime.